Zine By NY’s Anarchist Necromancer Patrick Geoffrois
$175
Out of stock
Description
Geoffrois, Patrick. Excerpts from Incantations of a Magickal Warrior, Vol. 1. Electric Press. New York. 1987.
Patrick Geoffrois (1950-1994) one of Paris’ “electric poets”, a radical 1960s poetry movement inspired in equal parts by dada, surrealism, and the Beats. With collaborator Michel Bulteau, he founded the psychedelic rock band Mahogany Brain, before abandoning everything to seek spirituality in India.
Geoffrois met A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of “The Hare Krishna Movement”, and quickly became a devotee, distributing the group’s literature throughout Europe and eventually New York City. Following Prabhupada’s death in 1977, Geoffrois gave up on the movement. In addition to playing guitar for James Chance and the Contortions, Geoffrois was a tarot card and palm reader and heroin dealer on Saint Marks Place.
During the 1989-1990 New York police investigation into the murder of swiss dancer Monkia Beerle by her boyfriend Daniel Rakowitz, “The Butcher of Tompkins Square Park”, Geoffrois’ reputation as a “black magician”, “satanist”, and “anarchist necromancer” put him at the center of an elaborate (baseless) conspiracy theory characteristic of other Satanic Panic incidents, leading Newsday to call him the “Lucifer of the Lower East Side”.
Since his death from AIDS in 1994, Geoffrois lives on as a near-legendary figure in books like Jarrett Kobeck’s The Future Won’t Be Long (2017) and in the film Downtown 81, which was later dedicated to his memory along with the late Jean-Michel Basquiat.
A perfect encapsulation of its mysterious and multifaceted author, this hand-stapled zine is hard to succinctly describe. Part book of poetry, part book of spells, it is the expression of Geoffrois’ personal philosophy and credo as a “Magickal Warrior”.
12mo. 16pp. Good condition, some slight creasing to the spine. Pages clean. Several small stains on back wrapper. First edition. One of 100 copies.
If you liked this book, you may also like this copy of Patrick Geoffrois’ only formally published book of poetry.
